‘Thanks.’
‘Luce,’ says Margot, sounding hesitant. ‘I’m sorry for last night.’
Lucy nods. ‘It’s OK. How’s your head today? Need a hair of the dog?’ she asks, indicating the champagne in the corner of the room.
‘No. I’m not drinking today.’ Margot’s gaze fixes on the suitcase standing in the corner of the room. ‘Is that for Monday?’ she asks.
Lucy nods. ‘Quite the honeymoon, right?’
‘You can take one after … when you’re better.’
‘Yes,’ she says, squeezing Margot’s hand. She doesn’t correct her.
‘What time are you due at the register office?’
‘Twelve.’
‘And you’re sure you don’t want the rest of us to come with you?’
‘It’s just the legal stuff, isn’t it? I think it means more to the parents to witness the formalities. For me, the wedding – the marriage – it starts back here, with all of you.’
‘Just think, by the time you return, you’ll be an old, married lady.’
‘A little less of the old, thanks.’
Kit knocks tentatively on the door before entering. She has changed into a long colourful dress covered in huge flowers and tied her hair up into its usual messy knot. Turquoise earrings glint at her lobes. Margot throws Lucy a surprised look.
‘Oh,’ says Kit, startling at the sight of Lucy stepping out from behind her sister. ‘Oh Lucy,’ she breathes, her eyes widening, her lower lip beginning to tremble.
‘Don’t cry.’
‘It’s OK. I’m wearing waterproof mascara.’
‘Do I look all right?’ Lucy asks, nervous.
‘You look perfect.’
‘You look great too, Mum,’ Margot says, throwing another surprised glance at Lucy.
‘Is it all right?’ Kit asks, tugging at the fabric.
‘More than.’
‘I didn’t want to let the side down.’
There is another knock at the door. ‘Is everyone decent?’
Margot throws the door open to Jonas. ‘As we’ll ever be.’
‘I wondered if you’d like me to take some photos? A few candid shots, nothing posed. You can all carry on doing what you’re doing.’
Lucy smiles. It’s obvious from the way Jonas is looking at Margot that he’s crazy about her. If she doesn’t make the most of this, she’s going to have to give her a stern talking to later.
Margot glances at Lucy. ‘We don’t have to, Luce, it’s up to you.’
Lucy flashes her most brilliant smile at Jonas. ‘I’d love that. Thank you. What?’ she asks, catching Margot and Kit’s amused exchange.
‘Well, you sure changed your tune,’ says Margot.
The sound of a horn blares out on the drive. ‘That’ll be Tom, back with the car,’ says Lucy with a nervous smile. ‘Time to go.’
31
With Lucy and Tom out of the house, the place becomes a hive of activity. Furniture is moved. Plates and cutlery are pulled out of hire crates, ice tipped into buckets, bottles arranged. Everyone lends a hand, even Chloe and May who are set to work on folding a stack of napkins and counting cutlery. It seems they all need a job to occupy their hands, to focus their love and attention, and to keep them from their thoughts.
Sibella arrives, looking beautiful in a simple, yellow linen dress. Margot helps her unload jam jars of meadow flowers, cut roses and the arrangements of dried lavender and wheat from the back of her car. Eve and Margot help her dot the flowers about the place – some in the house, some in the marquee – and arrange the lavender and wheat in a stunning display around the entrance to the tent. When they are finished, the air hums with the scent of late summer.
Walking back up from the marquee, they come upon Chloe and May, tumbling down the hillside in a rolypoly race. ‘Oh God,’ says Eve, spotting the green stains on their once pristine white dresses, the blades of grass caught in their hair. ‘The party hasn’t even started yet and look at them!’
‘Remind you of anything?’ asks Margot with a sly smile. ‘Lucy always had to win. Didn’t she? She’d have a complete tantrum if we didn’t let her.’ Then seeing Eve’s frown. ‘Come on. I mean, who cares about a few grass stains? Let them have their fun.’ She squeezes her hand. ‘There are more important things.’
Eve bites her lip and nods. ‘Right. More important things.’
The mood at the house – industrious and focused – shifts as soon as Lucy and Tom arrive back at Windfalls, with both sets of parents in tow. The married couple tumble from Tom’s battered jeep, flushed and excited, flashing their rings and their smiles, accepting congratulatory kisses and hugs. Almost simultaneously, a steady stream of vehicles and guests begins to appear down the drive. Champagne corks are popped. Glasses are clinked. Confetti is thrown. Someone, in the excitement, exuberantly throws a bag of rice at the couple, the whole packet clobbering Tom on the side of the head.
Margot hangs back a little, watching. She sees Jonas, dressed now in a slim-fitting dark suit and white shirt, moving through the crowd, unobtrusively snapping the guests unawares. She notes more than a couple of admiring glances cast in his direction and feels an unfamiliar emotion pulling at her. Oh Christ, she thinks. Is she jealous?
She pushes through the lively throng in the garden to find Eve. ‘Bloody hell,’ she says under her breath. ‘There’s a lot of them. Do you think we’ve got enough food?’
Eve nods, her face calm, her eyes scanning the crowd. ‘Yes, Margot. We have enough food.’
‘Course we do. You’re bloody brilliant.’
Eve gives her a small smile. ‘Thanks.’
Margot frowns. ‘You OK?’
‘Not now.’ She turns away, but not before Margot has seen the tears brimming in her sister’s eyes.
A battered transit van pulls up outside the house, out of which spills a motley crew of Tom’s friends, dragging instruments and equipment down to a small, makeshift stage in the orchard. After a brief tuning of guitars and checking of amps, they start up a folksy arrangement of one of Lucy’s favourite songs. Margot watches as Lucy shrieks with delight, kicks off her shoes and pulls Tom towards the little stage, for an impromptu first dance. She is a blur of red silk, blonde hair and flashing white teeth dancing barefoot in the grass and Tom, struggling to keep up with her, can’t seem to wipe the smile off his face. Margot watches them, feeling a deep ache rise up beside her joy.
The afternoon slides towards evening. The champagne continues to flow. Someone drags a keg of local ale onto a table in the marquee. The lamps hanging in the apple trees are lit. Cushions are requisitioned from the house. With the trickling release of Lucy’s news, any caution or careful reserve seems to fade with the growing sense of carpe diem that has seized the event. Andrew lights the bonfire and the air is filled with smoke and heat, the crackle of burning wood. It brings a new kind of energy to the proceedings, a certain primal wildness. A DJ takes to the decks in the marquee, the thud of bass changing the tempo of the night.
Margot, standing at a distance, inhales the scent of fire and closes her eyes. Something like fear stirs in her belly. When she opens them again, she sees her mother standing on the other side of the smoke haze, watching her. Their eyes meet over the bonfire and in the glowing light, Kit’s eyes reflect the red of the flames. They navigate the space, she thinks, like satellites revolving round the same planet, keeping a careful distance. Margot swallows and turns away. Not today, she tells herself. She will not let the memories claim her today.
Across the marquee, Margot can see Tom, leaning against the bar looking glum. She goes to him and places a glass of champagne in his hand. Their gaze tracks to Lucy, seated on a hay bale laughing and joking with a group of friends.
‘She’s amazing,’ says Margot.
‘Yes, she is.’
‘She won’t pay any attention to me when I suggest she takes it easy today,’ he says regretfully. ‘But it’s impossible to stay annoyed at her. Look.’
; Margot smiles, watching Lucy sashay theatrically with a girlfriend across to the dance floor, swishing the long silk skirt of her dress. ‘It is impossible,’ she agrees. ‘Trust me, I’ve had a lifetime practising.’
They both fall silent and Margot wonders if the word ‘lifetime’ has jarred for him too. It’s not helpful, she knows, but it’s hard not to wonder how much time is left. She looks so vibrant, so full of life. Surely, the surgery and the chemo will fix her? It’s impossible to imagine a world without the sheer force of Lucy in it.
Jonas appears at her side, his hand at her waist. He removes his camera from where it hangs around his neck and offers it to them both. ‘Take a look,’ he says. She leans in to the display as Tom scrolls back through the images Jonas has taken. There is one of May, her huge blue eyes looking up over a yellow rose. Lucy looking radiant as she steps from Tom’s car, her face creased with laughter. Another of Margot and Eve at the entrance to the tent, heads bent together in quiet discussion, a picture of Sibella looking happy, her head resting on Ted’s shoulder. Kit holding court in the kitchen surrounded by a cluster of Lucy’s adoring friends. There are shots of the guests laughing and dancing, and one captured through the opening of the marquee, Lucy and Tom in an intimate moment of stillness, foreheads pressed together, eyes closed.
‘They’re gorgeous,’ says Margot, genuinely taken aback.
Jonas nods. ‘They’re going to be amazing,’ he says. ‘There is so much love here.’ He grabs her hand. ‘Margot, you have an amazing family.’
Margot looks over his shoulder and sees Eve over near the band, spinning May around in her arms, her little feet flying out from beneath her. She sees Lucy and Ted, in his crumpled linen suit, dancing in a makeshift circle and Andrew waltzing awkwardly with Kit. She sees them all and smiles. ‘Yes, I do.’ She turns back to Jonas. ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she says, the words out of her mouth before she can stop them.
He smiles down at her, holding her gaze.
Tom clears his throat. ‘I think I’ll go and dance with my lovely wife,’ he says, tactfully.
Jonas leans in towards Margot. ‘You look beautiful,’ he says.
‘Thank you.’
He reels backwards in exaggerated shock. ‘I do believe she accepted a compliment.’
She whacks him on the arm. ‘Ha ha. Funny guy.’
‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘See, I can take a compliment too.’
Margot narrows her eyes. He lifts his camera as if to take her photo but she bats it away. ‘How about you put that down for a moment and kiss me instead?’
When Tom returns, red-faced and puffing from an energetic dance-off, Margot leaves him chatting with Jonas, and heads across to the far side of the marquee, where she can see Eve seated on one of the hay bales in the corner of the tent, her face flashing alternate red, purple, green and blue under the disco strobe light. She is watching Andrew whirl Chloe around the dance floor, his cheeks flushed and his shirt buttons straining against his stomach. Chloe is shrieking with delight, giddy on the lateness of the night and the lemonade she has been sneaking from the bar. Cyndi Lauper is singing about girls just wanting to have fun. Margot protests as Andrew attempts to draw her into their dance party, before plonking herself down next to Eve on the hay bale. They watch the antics out on the dance floor in silence, together in their stillness.
‘I think my marriage is over,’ Eve says finally, her eyes never leaving the scene in front of them, but leaning in slightly so that Margot can hear the words over the music.
Margot doesn’t say anything for a moment. Eve knows about the affair. She doesn’t know who told her, but at least she isn’t going to have to be the one to do it. This week of surprises just keeps on giving. She turns to Eve. ‘You think it’s over, or you know?’
She shrugs.
‘What happened?’ asks Margot carefully.
‘Andrew found out I’ve been having an affair.’
Margot frowns. ‘What?’
‘I’ve been having an affair,’ she repeats. ‘With Ryan.’
Margot can’t keep up. ‘You have? With Ryan? Ryan from the pub?’
‘Uh-huh.’
Margot stares, open-mouthed. ‘What the fuck, Eve!’
Eve nods. ‘I know.’
‘I just … I can’t … you? You had an affair?’
Eve turns to Margot and narrows her eyes. ‘Is it that hard to believe?’
‘Sorry, no. It’s just you’re so … you’re so …’
‘So what?’
‘Well … good. Moral. You always know the right thing to do. You always do the right thing. I suppose it’s that … and the fact that Lucy said … and I thought …’ She catches herself. ‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter what we thought. Fuck, Eve.’
‘Andrew found out last night. He confronted me this morning.’
‘How?’ But Margot is remembering the night before and a hazy moment in the pub car park, the stolen cigarette, the security light flashing onto a scene, the barmaid from the pub gesticulating angrily, the look on Andrew’s ashen-face. The penny drops. The barmaid must have known. She must have been the one to tell him. ‘Oh Eve. What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I’m so ashamed. I had my head turned. I don’t understand it myself. If you’d told me a few months ago that I’d sleep with another man – with Ryan – I would have laughed at you. But I’ve got to know him a bit over the past few months and I don’t know … the way he looked at me, the way he spoke to me, made me feel … seen. He made me feel good. Desired.’ Eve looks shamefaced. ‘I think I needed someone to see me not just as a wife, or a mother, or a meddling sister,’ she adds with a regretful smile, ‘but as me, Eve. Ryan made me feel special.’
‘You are special, Eve.’ Margot is still staggered at her sister’s revelation. Eve and Ryan. ‘How is Andrew taking the news?’
‘He’s doing that male thing of hiding his emotions. Look at him,’ she says.
Margot turns and sees Andrew strutting like Mick Jagger across the dance floor, playing the fool for his daughters. Under his arms, sweat patches are blooming on his shirt and his cheeks are flushed red. When Margot turns back to Eve, she sees that by comparison her sister looks inordinately pale and sad. ‘Lucy’s news … it makes you see the world a little differently, doesn’t it?’ she says.
Margot nods. ‘Yes. It does.’
‘We’ve got it so wrong, Andrew and I. I think, perhaps, we both stopped trying. We lost sight of each other and what’s most important. I never thought we’d become that couple. The one bickering over school runs and washing-up.’
Margot can’t shake the image of Andrew’s white face from the night before. ‘What did he say? How did he react?’
‘He gave me a pair of diamond earrings?’
‘He what?’
Eve nods. ‘He gave me these.’ She gestures to the glittering art deco earrings at her earlobes. Margot’s eyes widen even further. ‘He’s angry,’ she continues, ‘but mostly sad. I think the earrings were going to be an apology, for being so distracted by his work, for not being there enough. Only it seems that I’m the one who owes him the bigger apology.’
Margot reaches out and takes Eve’s hand.
‘He’s a good dad,’ Eve adds, watching him with the girls, Chloe’s feet now balanced on Andrew’s polished shoes as he holds her tight and dances her around the tent in time to the music, the smaller May clinging like a monkey to his back.
‘And you’re a good mum.’ Margot squeezes her sister’s fingers. ‘You’re a good person.’
‘I don’t feel good. I broke my wedding vows. I’ve lost Andrew’s trust. I’ve potentially thrown away our entire marriage and all we’ve built together.’
‘If you both want to work this out, you will find a way. And well … if not, you’ll be OK. You are strong – stronger than you know,’ says Margot, fiercely.
‘Perhaps we all are, when we have to be?’ Eve says, nodding at Lucy, then turning her sliding glance b
ack to Margot. ‘Perhaps it’s better to have our secrets out in the open. It’s painful, but at least we are standing on the same ground now. We can see what is broken. Perhaps you have to do that, before you can even start to think about accepting it, healing it?’
Margot knows Eve is asking something of her. She knows she’s asking her to open up. Margot hesitates, wondering if she can find the words, wondering whether she can unburden herself of the darkness she has carried for so long. What was it Jonas had said to her? Let yourself feel it all. What’s the worst that could happen?
Laughter erupts from the dance floor. They turn to see Lucy, swaying with her girlfriends, arms around shoulders, her face flushed, her hair falling around her face.
‘It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’ says Eve.
‘Do you think she’s in denial?’
‘Wouldn’t you be?’
‘I keep wanting her to tell us it’s a sick joke. Part of her hare-brained scheme to make us celebrate this day, all together.’
‘Is she overdoing it, do you think?’
‘Probably.’
Margot bites her lip. ‘Should we intervene?’
‘This is Lucy’s night. We’ve got to let her do it her way.’
Margot glances at Eve in surprise. That she should be the one to relinquish control and let Lucy be is unexpected, but Eve nods and with a sigh, leans her head against Margot’s shoulder.
Lucy, spying them through the swaying guests, comes and collapses, hot and sweaty, onto the hay next to them. ‘Oh my God,’ she says, gasping, ‘please save me from my brother-in-law’s tragic dance moves. I’m dying.’
There is a shocked silence. The three sisters freeze as the truth of Lucy’s words registers. Eve looks from Margot to Lucy and then, without warning, all three of them burst out laughing. ‘It’s not funny,’ says Eve.
‘It’s not,’ agrees Margot.
But they can’t seem to stop, their laughter mingling with tears, their hands reaching out for each other.
The River Home : A Novel (2020) Page 25